AUJIK, a mysterious Shinto group that believes all things in nature — including the products of human technology — possess a soul, have created a series of videos showing organic/synthetic artifacts intended to bridge the gap between the natural and artificial worlds.

This video, narrated by a masked AUJIK member named Nashi, explores some of the group’s thoughts on technological singularity and artificial selection. AUJIK suggests that the tension between “original” nature (trees, rocks, animals, etc.) and “refined” nature (human technology) is decreasing, and that the two are converging. The group believes it is possible to accelerate this convergence by creating organic/synthetic artifacts such as the ones that appear in the video.

After the computer receives and processes a digital image (in this case, a webcam snapshot), ultraviolet laser beams are fired at the photoluminescent screen to produce square pixels of glowing green light. Subtle gradations are created by controlling the timing of the laser shots and allowing the darker portions of the image to fade. The completed image gradually disappears as the glow of the screen grows dim.

The novelty of the system seems to make it well-suited for use in entertainment and advertising, and the creators are now looking at ways to create glowing images in liquid and on irregular surfaces.

Kawada Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have updated their 10-year-old line of HRP humanoid robots with an athletic machine they hope to develop into a menial worker.

HRP-4: Menial worker of the future?

The blue and white humanoid — named HRP-4 — stands 1.51 meters (5 ft) tall and boasts the body of a track-and-field athlete. The robot’s 34 joints are more flexible than those of previous models, and at 39 kilograms (86 lbs), it weighs 4 kilograms (8.8 lbs) less than last year’s entertainment-oriented HRP-4C fembot.

At the unveiling on Wednesday, the agile robot demonstrated a range of skills that may come in handy in the workplace, such as the ability to stand on one foot, twist its waist, strike poses, follow spoken commands, recognize faces, and track objects by moving its head. Its five-fingered hands are also more dexterous than those of its predecessors.

Kawada and AIST plan to begin selling the robots to universities and research institutions in January 2011 at a starting price of 26 million yen ($305,000) each.

A unique characteristic of Tsuji’s minimalist style is that each frame is created by partially erasing and redrawing the scene on the same sheet of paper. Traces of the previous frames remain visible as the dream-like action unfolds, creating an uncanny sense of motion and the passage of time.

A dramatic computer-animated simulation, produced by NHK Japan and the National Film Board of Canada, depicts what would happen if an asteroid measuring 500 kilometers (300 mi) in diameter collided with Earth.

The massive asteroid — larger than Japan’s main island of Honshu — is traveling at a speed of over 720,000 kilometers per hour (450,000 mph) when it crashes into the Pacific about 1,500 kilometers (1,000 mi) south of Japan. The impact causes the crust of the Earth to peel away like the skin of an orange, in what is called a “crust tsunami.” Japan and a large portion of Asia are disintegrated, and chunks of burning rock as large as city blocks are hurled into the atmosphere before raining back down on the planet.

The crater from the impact measures 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) across, and the rim stands 7,000 meters (23,000 ft), higher than many mountains on Earth today.

Moments after the impact, a blanket of rock vapor as hot as the sun spreads quickly across the planet, decimating every living thing in its path. The entire planet is covered within one day. The oceans boil under the intense heat, evaporating at a rate of 5 centimeters (2 in) per second until they vanish.

After a year, the rock vapor starts to dissipate and temperatures begin to drop. Within 1,000 years, the evaporated water vapor — which does not escape into space due to the Earth’s size and gravity — cools, condenses, and falls back as torrential rain. The oceans start to fill, and life begins again.

It is thought that asteroid impacts of this magnitude have happened six times in the past.

This simulation was featured in “Miracle Planet” (Episode 1 - The Violent Past), a five-part documentary about the 4.6-billion-year history of the Earth.